Trowie Knowe, Beorgs Of Housetter
Chambered Cairn (Neolithic)
Site Name Trowie Knowe, Beorgs Of Housetter
Classification Chambered Cairn (Neolithic)
Canmore ID 834
Site Number HU38NE 1
NGR HU 36197 85526
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/834
- Council Shetland Islands
- Parish Northmavine
- Former Region Shetland Islands Area
- Former District Shetland
- Former County Shetland
HU38NE 1 3620 8552.
(HU 361 856) 'Trowie Knowe', a heel-shaped cairn with an irregular chamber, lies on the gently sloping moorland at the foot of the steep screes of the Beorgs of Housetter. It is built of pink granite boulders and still stands 5' high, but it has been greatly disturbed both by three attempts at excavation and by quarrying for road metal.
A S Henshall 1963; J Abercromby 1905; RCAHMS 1946.
'Trowie Knowe', at HU 3620 8554, a heel-shaped cairn as described and planned by Henshall. Name confirmed locally.
Surveyed at 1/2500
Visited by OS(RL) 19th May 1969.
Field Visit (11 August 1931)
Heel-shaped Cairn, Beorgs of Housetter.
About 200 yds to the N of the standing stones (RCAHMS 1946 No. 1360) at the foot of the Beorgs of Housetter, on a little hillock not more than 200 ft above sea-level, is a dilapidated chambered cairn, locally known as the "Trowie Knowe" or Fairy Knoll. The monument has suffered seriously from being used as a quarry during the construction of the public road to North Roe, which runs past it on the E. at a distance of some 50 yds. No doubt, too, it bears the marks of three tentative explorations which have been carried out at different times, the last, which is also the only one of which any record has been preserved, by Lord Abercromby in 1904.
The circular outline shown in the sketch plan which accompanies Abercromby's report (1) is not meant to be more than conventional. In point of fact, external appearances indicate that the ground-plan has approximated to that of the so-called "heel-shaped" cairns discussed in the Introduction (RCAHMS 1946 Vol. i, pp. 20 f.). The over-all diameter is about 27 ft., and the present height is about 4 ft. 6 in. or 5 ft. The whole has been composed of large red stones of a granitic character, and Abercromby is probably right in suggesting that at least the two largest were natural outcrops of which the designers have taken advantage. Round the margin there has been a carefully built retaining-wall of drystone masonry, 15 in. thick, now traceable only on the W. and N.W. The frontal façade is on the E., and about the middle of it is a narrow opening, which leads almost directly into the interior. The chamber, which lay with its major axis E. and W., was not centrally placed and had, like other Shetland examples, a very irregular form. It was roughly 11 ft. long, with a maximum width of 6 ft.
RCAHMS 1946, visited 11 August 1931.
(1) PSAS, xxxix (1904-5), pp. 175-9. The description there given must, however, be read in the light of the fact that the trefoil arrangement, since noted in Shetland, was unknown to Lord Abercromby, and that the cairn had been seriously interfered with before he saw it.
